Re: Web Storage & SQL

Giovanni Campagna wrote:
> We have a standard SQL, and we have DBMS-specific extensions (for
> SQLite, for MySQL, for SQLServer, etc.).
 > The latest version is "ISO/IEC 9075:2008 Information technology --
 > Database languages -- SQL", released in 2008, but actively being
 > revised, according to the ISO page.

Sort of.  "Extensions" implies that as long as you write a query to the 
ISO standard in question the behavior will be the same in all databases 
and that you have to go out of your way to write non-interoperable 
queries.  This is not the case.  A query written based on that ISO 
standard has different behavior in different databases, in many cases.

So just telling web authors "write queries based on this standard and 
they will work" is not sufficient.  Let's ignore the fact that most web 
authors wouldn't be able to even get their hands on this standard to see 
whether their query complies with it without paying a fairly hefty sum [1].

You could also require UAs to implement queries exactly per this 
standard.  Vladimir mentioned as a possible option in his original post. 
  This is definitely the way forward (with either this SQL definition or 
some subset thereof)

> As usual, if you want interoperability, you use the existing,
> implemented, standard (or you ask the ISO to produce an updated
> standard with new features), else you use extensions.

Use of the existing standard by authors doesn't give interoperability.

-Boris


[1] 
http://www.iso.org/iso/search.htm?qt=9075&searchSubmit=Search&sort=rel&type=simple&published=on 
tells me that to get just the parts of ISO 9075:2008 that are obviously 
necessary to be able to do anything whatsoever will cost me either about 
$290 or $770 depending on what's in part 2 of the spec.  I'm assuming 
none of parts 3,4,9,10,11,13,14 are relevant to our use case; this is 
probably a good assumption for most of them.  That's for getting a PDF, 
of course; the PDF on CD prices are somewhat higher, and there seem to 
be no other provisions for looking at this specification.

Received on Thursday, 9 April 2009 16:26:39 UTC